Monday, August 27, 2007

In the Oscar-winning movie Tootsie, Jessica Lange confesses to Dustin Hoffman in his female disguise that all she wants from a man is for him to play it straight, no games, and tell the truth that he simply wants to make love to her.

When Hoffman actually tries the tactic as his real-life male self, the comely Jessica throws her drink in his face. Such impertinence.

The GOP has been putting on the hair shirt. Not only has the perhaps last of its flirtations with idealism (Iraq---the other two being Reagan vs. communism and the Civil War) gone not-that-well, but domestically, it proved that once entrusted with actual governing power, it would cynically loot the public treasury to buy votes just like any other ruling party, and without the moral confidence. (Or acclaim.)

After they punted congress in the 2006 elections, there was barely a Republican, and not a single conservative, who didn't see it as justice.

Enter Fred-ot.

By most accounts, so far Fred Thompson's trip down the 2008 rhetorical runway has a lot of honesty, a lot of hair shirt. Truth, you might call it. The GOP has abandoned its principles, the Democrats don't take anything seriously. But will it fly?

No, you don't court Jessica Lange or the American electorate with brutal honesty and the offer of a hair shirt. You'll make a lot of sense to the wallflowers of America like me, but the rest, friend and foe alike, will throw their drinks in your face.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Let's see here. Ten years ago, twenty years ago, the failure of the mortgage lending industry to make most subprime loans was called "redlining." Now, the overwhelming willingness on its part to find ways to qualify almost everyone is called "unfair/unsound lending practices". That in a nutshell is a good history of Hillary's intellectual development. There's just no pleasing some people.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

I see that the ineffable Larry Tribe, Harvard law professor and man of action, has apologized to the widow of the late Professor Bernie Siegan for having written Senator Joe Biden in 1987, questioning Siegan's "competence as a constitutional lawyer and sincerity as a scholar." Siegan had been nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, but never was confirmed.

Maybe Tribe sincerely feels bad and believes that his words were misguided. Or maybe he believes that Hillary will be president and that she might nominate him to the Supreme Court, and that the time is now to backtrack on his treatment of Siegan so that the Republicans might be induced to refrain from engaging in a little payback. Call me a cynic, but I believe the latter.

Since long before the actual invasion, any number of commentators suggested that our involvement in Iraq would enmesh us in "another Vietnam." The Democratic Party even ran a lame nominee for President largely (it seems) on the sense that as an anti-Vietnam war veteran, Sen. Kerry would command the respect and admiration and trust of enough Americans to win the Presidency. As things have continued to remain tough (though perhaps improving a bit over the last few months) the comparisons have continued to roll in.

Jonah Goldberg over at NRO makes a point, though, that had always niggled at me a bit, but that I had never seen properly expressed. Sure, there's a conventional wisdom about Vietnam that says it was a mistake to get in - and there are plenty of reasonable arguments on that side. But it seems to me wildly inflated to suggest that our withdrawal and South Vietnam's subsequent defeat was either (a) a good thing for the U.S. or (b) a benefit to the Democratic Party. Consider the thirty-odd years since our withdrawal and tell me which party has done better politically? Part of the Republican success has been predicated on the sense that the Democratic Party is not to be trusted with our national security and a central part of that distrust was its mushiness on the Cold War. And central to that sense was the Dems' evolution into the anti-Vietnam War party, perhaps best exemplified by McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972.

I grew up in a military family with a father who had flown B-52 and C-130 missions over Vietnam and I understood from early on that the Democrats could not be trusted because they didn't understand or were willing to take it to the enemy - and Vietnam was the clearest example. Two anecdotes. Sometime around 1980 we were at my grandparents' house and my aunt mentioned that she had gotten the new Jane Fonda workout tape. My dad, whom I had never heard swear before, turned around and barked, "What!? You're watching that b**ch!? I had friends die because of her!" Clearly, the anti-war folks were anathema to dad. A couple of years ago, as a new (untenured) faculty member, I was chatting with an older (tenured) professor who was exercised because some of the anti-Kerry guys had used the term "traitor" (or something like that) and, as a veteran, there's hardly anything worse to be called, he fumed. Being untenured, I sort of smiled and nodded, walked to my office and thought to myself: well, that's likely true, but the overheated, cynical and false claims Kerry made after returning from Vietnam (most notably at the Winter Soldier conference) were themselves deeply offensive and meant that folks like my dad (and I, for that matter) couldn't ever vote for anyone like him.

If Iraq is going badly next summer, the GOP will take it on the chin electorally. But the Dems won't gain any long-term advantages by making themselves the agents of withdrawal. Why do you think the smartest candidate for the nomination - Sen. Clinton - has been the most resistant to the withdrawal siren? Americans, I think, don't particularly like to fight long, drawn-out wars but even more they hate to lose them.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Congress got a whopping 18% approval rating. That makes President Bush seem like a rock star in comparison. In the 33 years since Gallup first started the poll Congressional ratings have only been this low one other time, and that was in the early 90s when the House banking scandal came to light. The president’s approval rating, while low at 32%, gives him quite a leg up on Congress. Of course the press won’t play it that way, so all we’ll ever hear about is a “deeply unpopular president.”

One interesting aspect of the poll is that the Democrats are loosing support from their own:

Frustration with Congress spans the political spectrum. There are only minor (but not statistically meaningful) differences in the approval ratings Democrats (21%), Republicans (18%), and independents (17%) give to Congress. Typically, partisans view Congress much more positively when their party is in control of the institution, so the fact that Democrats' ratings are not materially better than Republicans' is notable.

The nine-point drop in Congress' job approval rating from last month to this month has come exclusively from Democrats and independents, with Democrats' ratings dropping 11 points (from 32% to 21%) and independents' ratings dropping 13 points (from 30% to 17%). Republicans' 18% approval rating is unchanged from last month.

If you’ll remember back in November Republicans lost control of Congress because of lukewarm support from their base and Independents moving toward Democrats. They have now lost that advantage. I love the irony here, because in the campaign Democrats were withering in their criticism of the Republican Congress, but they offered no alternative other than how rotten Republicans are so vote for us. Now it seems that most Americans think the Democrats are rotten too.

Now what? If Republicans would simply go back to 1994, remember what they stood for when they took control of Congress, and govern that way again this Democrat Congress will be short lived.

I've been skeptical of the campaign Hugh Hewitt has been waging in his multi-media, multi-part defense of Mitt Romney, in particular of his efforts to tar anyone who says anything negative about Mormonism as a religious "bigot." (I don't think it's right to rule Romney out of bounds simply because he holds certain religious views I find wrongheaded, but I also don't think that a candidate's religious views are somehow sacrosanct when reflecting on who one wants to lead our country. His or her religious views tell us something about their moral and rational judgment, after all).

For a real example of what seems to me to be outright religious bigotry check out this post over at CQ regarding how the Louisiana Democratic Party is wheeling out that old anti-Catholic nastiness against the Republican candidate, Bobby Jindal. Jindal's a Catholic and has written a number of apologetic defenses of the faith, which the Louisiana Dems have decided makes him "anti-Protestant." It's a smear and utterly groundless (and I say that as one of those still "protest"-ing and who disagrees with some of Jindal's theological claims). Louisiana politics has always been a bit nasty, but this is despicable.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Who'd a thunk it? I've always blamed France for the Iraq war, and of course that was right, as we shall see in a minute.

But first, as the new Gordon Brown regime evacuates the slim UK force from Basra, Nicolas Sarkozy's new foreign minister paid a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday and offered to help. The world is stunned, but they shouldn't be. Bernard Kouchner, a founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), is a most amazing man:

Now we are turning the page. There is a new perspective. We want to talk about the future. Democracy, integrity, sovereignty, reconciliation, and stopping the killings. That's my deep aim.

Why, just recently, I meself resolved to turn the page when maneuvered into discussing Iraq with my friends from the left: Don't mention Bush. Already, things have gone unfathomably smoother that way. (And never underestimate a little success on the ground, no matter how tenuous.)

Now, way back when The New Republic was a credible magazine (two months ago), it ran a fascinating article by Paul Berman on Kouchner and the Iraq War that's a must-read except you can't because it's behind their subscription wall. (The enterprising must-reader can get behind it by removing "tnr.com" from his stored cookies.)

Only, by then, everything was already going to hell, from Kouchner's point of view. He was already furious--judging, at least, from what he went on to write during the next year. He was furious at his own government, in Paris. Bush and the United States had been putting ever more pressure on Saddam and had been making it ever more obvious that, unless Saddam caved, the invasion was guaranteed to go ahead. The French should have done everything possible to make these American threats look ever more fearsome.

Instead, Chirac's French foreign minister was running around the world actively campaigning against the American policy. Kouchner was convinced that, by agitating so energetically against the American invasion, French diplomacy was only sustaining Saddam in his fantasy that somebody, somewhere, was going to rescue his regime. This was a disaster. The no-war policy was the enemy of the less-than-war possibility. After the invasion, when the American investigators had finally managed to interview Saddam and some of his generals in their prison cells, we learned that, until the last moment, Saddam did imagine that, because of objections in the Security Council, the United States was not going to invade. This was Kouchner's fear entirely--what he had warned against in his manifesto in Le Monde.

Indeed---had France gotten the US/UK's back, Saddam and his lovely sons Uday and Attila would have abdicated and be sunning themselves on the Riviera as you read this instead of joining their hundreds of thousands of victims six feet under. Instead, the corrupt Chirac regime set about building a critical mass of world opposition to toppling Saddam & Sons. The US and UK were on the clock, and so they made the precipitous decision to drop a few bombs and try to take him out. The die was cast, but the timing was dictated by France, not---according to popular belief---America and Britain.

The TNR article continues unsparingly with Kouchner's disagreement with casting the die and invading, his disdain for Bush's rhetorical clumsiness in playing the WMD card in the court of world opinion instead of what Kouchner saw as a slam-dunk humanitarian argument (although that could have been more Blair's idea, seeking UK legal cover), disagreement with disbanding the Ba'athist army (although it largely disbanded itself), and a revulsion with Paul Bremer's---and the Bush Administration's, it must be admitted---autocratic stewardship of the resulting mess (can't think of any objection there).

But his greatest revulsion was reserved for the Western left (and as an official of France's Socialist Party and with a plan for global health care, a member of the left himself), with its mindless anti-globalist knee-jerk anti-American opposition to even the clearest of moral imperatives, because Kouchner is one of those idealists who believes that if you hear a man killing his wife in the next apartment, you have a moral duty to break in and stop it.

He thought about the European peace movement. The mass marches against the war, the placards, the slogans, the chanting crowds--every last aspect of this movement reminded him of the grossest errors of the left-wing past. "In our generation," he told [close friend Daniel] Cohn-Bendit, "antiwar marches used to offer protection to the worst Stalinist regimes, the most frightening massacres, and because of this, I wouldn't let myself take part anymore--nor would you, Danny. God knows how often we heard people shout, 'Down with Bush!' But I didn't hear even the tiniest cry, 'Down with Saddam!' And let's not even mention--or rather, we had better mention--the anti-Semitic incidents...

Kouchner's argument about Iraq mostly focused on a specific reality, and this was the scale of the disaster in Iraq under Saddam's rule. The grimness of the human landscape in Iraq, together with the plea for help that so many Iraqis had been making for so many years, sufficed to justify the invasion, even without reference to worldwide principles. Yet where were the champions of the humanitarian cause, the human-rights militants, who should have responded to these pleas? Kouchner wasn't concerned about the orthodox left--the traditional left that had always been wrong about totalitarian movements, the left that pictured America as the fountain of evil, the left that had never wanted to overthrow Milosevic, the left that, in February 2003, was perfectly content to march in the streets side by side with the supporters of Saddam and the wildest of Islamist totalitarians, as masses of people had done in the giant antiwar demonstrations in Paris and London...

The tenor of Kouchner's comments on the intellectuals and human-rights and humanitarian militants suggested pretty plainly that, in his judgment, a huge number of people had betrayed their own best principles--had done this out of anti-American spite, or out of loathing for Bush, or who knows why, but they had done it. A dismaying situation: America, in its maladroit fashion, had just succeeded in overthrowing the worst tyranny of modern times, and the world's intellectuals were virtually quivering in indignation that such a thing had taken place.

A leftist mugged by reality and repulsed at his own side's obtuseness---a neo-con, if you will, at least by European standards. (Although to be called one might destroy him in the eyes of his enlightened fellows. Shhhhhhhhh.)

Paul Berman's article has many other wonders, few of them complimentary to the Bush Administration, about the man Bernard Kouchner, but he's worth our time to learn of him. A most amazing man:

You'll see, history will say that the Americans liberated the Iraqis, whatever the future may be, even if they did it poorly...The Americans have led a legitimate war on the basis of bad and false reasons, and, unfortunately, without the international community. In the long run, they will win, even so--but badly.

At this moment in time and history, winning badly will have to do, and I believe Bernard Kouchner is just the guy to help us do it.

Friday, August 17, 2007

I'm all for free markets, but this story looks really quite bothersome. Colorado Christian University didn't renew the contract of Andrew Paquin because he didn't seem supportive enough of the university's revised mission, one that included a commitment to free markets. Apparently, he had the temerity to assign in class works by Peter Singer and Jim Wallis. Both of those guys are deeply wrong in their policy prescriptions (and, at least with Singer, his fundamental moral claims) but a student who is taking a class on views of economic justice and the like ought to be acquainted with their views. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

But just to be fair, though, it might be worth noting that someone who was teaching in your typical liberal arts college and assigned works by, say, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell (and taught in a way that made it clear he agreed with them), he would certainly be in grave danger of not securing tenure. But inasmuch as we think that unfair (and we should) so too should we think this.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Glenn Reynolds links to some of the predictable concerns about 2008; at 20 months or so, it's perhaps the longest presidential campaign in history.

Barack Obama's current misspeakages notwithstanding, and who knows, he might be absolved of them by the time the first primary vote is cast---Americans have notoriously short memories---what I hope the process proves is that absolutely nobody these days is qualified to be President of the United States, so perhaps we'll get off the next president's back a little, whoever she may be.

The only presidents to get their grist through the mill in the 20th century were the Roosevelts (although Teddy was a bit crackers before and after, although not during), Ike, and Ronald Reagan. Harry Truman is bouncing back a little, mostly through Democrat-leaning historical revisionism, and Bush41 and Bill Clinton had rather tame times that were immune to any major screwups. Jack Kennedy's star sinks the more we learn about him, and praise for his presidency these days rests mostly on eyewitness testimonials on what he would have done had he lived, like pull us out of Vietnam or actually lift a finger about civil rights.

Our current president---at the mention of whose name many Americans descend into a certain derangement---could not be said to have been a stellar candidate in 2000. He was a six-year governor of a large state, but one whose top job was constitutionally weak. Neither could he be accused of a mastery of the rhetorical arts or a history of elegant self-authored position papers.

But he knew how to handle himself, which his opponents Al Gore and John Kerry did not. Gore lost an unloseable peace-and-prosperity election by mookiness alone, and George W. Bush (there, I said it), for all his verbal clumsiness, never said anything as foolish as "I voted for it before I voted against it," which alone lost Kerry his chance to become JFK44.

And speaking of losers, it's difficult to make the case that Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis or Bob Dole never becoming president was a great tragedy for the republic.

But they sure look good to me about right freaking now:

The most qualified for the job in 2008 could very well be Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich. Each has a creditable intelligence, insight and vision. Each has an alarming lack of self-control and statesmanship. Dang. It's a fact that if you can't be trusted to handle yourself, we cannot trust you to handle what is now an impossible job.

My quick takes on the rest---

His Rudiness: The ultimate metrosexual---agnostic on social issues, agnostic on them in his personal life, too. The most glib and able rhetorician since Clinton42, and Reagan and JFK before that. Seems to like tax cuts and is a bear (bull?) on national defense, and even his, um, nuanced position on it will wipe the floor with any Democrat hem-and-hawer on illegal immigration. Can win any given election on the quality of his BS alone, and if nobody else shows up at the post, conservatives will have to take 2/3 of a loaf, and mebbe get a skosh more around the seams.

Clinton44: Likewise for leftists, about 2/3 of a loaf. Not as dovish or as socially progressive as they'd like, and a bit of a free-trader to boot. Still, she hates tax cuts, which are a moral obscenity to the cosmic justice crowd, and that goes a long way. And although I've seen her turn in some lousy performances on the stump as only a six-year elected official, she's also put in a lot of excellent ones. She's still learning, and unlike Obama and the late great John Kerry, has never put her foot in it, and neither do I expect she will.

Mitt the Last---the odds being prohibitively against there ever ever ever being a second president named Mitt: Leave out the Mormon thing, which would hit the fan on both left and right bigtime. (Wait until you hear about the Mormon underwear: if the press is forced to use it to down the GOP candidate, they certainly will. They've been polite so far, but if Mitt gets anywhere near the danger zone, rest assured that the article is already written up, like Chuckles' obituary.)

No, the problem is not just being a mere former one-term governor (four years, Connecticut)---Mitt says weird things, like his sons are serving the nation by working on his campaign instead of volunteering for Iraq. And that thing about putting his dog carrier (with dog inside) on the roof of the family car on a vacation trip, and then saying he enjoyed it, the poopoo jetting down the car windows as proof to the contrary.

This is never going to wash in a presidential election. Even Al Gore was never that much of a mook.

Barack Obama: Man, I'd love to have a black president. It would be good for the country, it'd be good for the world. Just not this one. He's a follow-the-dots lefty, and on those rare occasions when he actually thinks for himself and departs from orthodoxy, trouble follows.

John Himself McCain: His departures from orthodoxy have become orthodox for him. If Reagan's model of leadership was finding a parade and standing in front of it, McCain's is building his own drum, pounding on it, and then marching to it. We all love and respect the guy, but he never perfected the technique of making new friends without losing the ones he's already made.

John Edwards: Parlaying the millions he scored as a trial lawyer into a Senate seat, all on the strength of his BS (and great looks) alone, he (and the lovely missus) somehow got the impression that works in the real world, too. Sorry, our standards are much lower for the legislature (see Kennedy, Ted) than the executive. Much, much lower.

By all outward metrics, he's the perfect candidate and will get the Martian and turnip truck vote, but that's about it.

Bill Richardson: Ace credentials, but punting his interview with the American people farther and farther as you read this, making us all wonder why anyone ever took him seriously in the first place. Mook.

Mike Huckabee: I like him. But although creationists don't have an official underwear, if 1960 was a referendum on JFK and Roman Catholicism (and there was a dry run with another loser, Al Smith, in 1928), Mormonism and creationism haven't even put on their uniforms yet, regardless of what might lie underneath. I mean, creationism can't even carry the Roman Catholic vote, which has trended toward the GOP since Reagan. It's weird, even by Roman Catholic standards.) Mook.

Did we forget anyone? Oh yeah, Fred Dalton Thompson. We'll soon see if he has the right stuff to justify putting him in the Big Chair, but he's the only one among them who's taken his own time about this president thing, and didn't let anxiety dictate when he should show up to lead the parade. First you've got to let it gather, and showing up too early to lead it is gauche, excuse my French.

Friday, August 10, 2007

I've been struggling with the current truism, that the only solution to Iraq is political, not military. Even St. David Petraeus has been known to mouth that one. No justice, no peace, it's been formulated in another context.

But by "military" we really mean "security." There is no security solution, then?

Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither, said Ben Franklin. But is that really true outside the United States? (Like in the UK, where what the ACLU considers egregious abrogations of civil rights are routine, and people love them.)

Folks are fully willing to sacrifice freedom for security all over the world, and that's the fact. It's why there are so many dictators still in power, and dictators are the rule not the exception throughout the fractious Arab world.

The prophet Sting advises us that there is no political solution to our troubled evolution. I'm not a disciple, but I think he was onto something there. What I can glean from the confusing reports from over there is that Iraqi society is moving ahead of its government, as successful societies always must. (The medieval Muslim philosopher al-Farabi notes that first there is a common ground, an ethos, that defines a nation or a people. Politics simply follows.)

The Iraqis have no choice, but I dunno if the American polity will give the situation until January '08 to leave more divinable tea leaves, although our generals are already making those noises. Is the surge "working"? Even some Democrat senators think so. But what is this "surge"? What does "working" mean? Language devolves into nonsense so quickly these days.

A>B has been the conventional wisdom, that political agreement will result in stability. Or maybe it's A>B>A+, that stability will result in political progress will result in greater stability. I'm not sure the Arab world (or human society at its most naked, as Iraq's is) works that way, as previously noted. Politics, as we in the West have grown to understand it, is not what politics is when practiced at the tribal/sectarian level.

Maybe A is simply A, and B is only a corollary. If people want peace, they tend to get peace, even if you tend to have to kill most of those who don't want peace first. Politics might simply be those who are left standing writing up the details.

But, if the Taliban hadn't been enough proof, the barbarity and outright obscenity of bin Ladenism as exhibited in Iraq has turned all but the most self-annihilating of Muslims against this latest centennial round of Islamic eschatology.

So, what remains is Hobbes, and as bin Laden himself noted, people go with the strongest-looking horse, the likely winner.

We are continually told that we must keep our eye on the real ball, the real villain, the real threat, Osama bin Laden. I submit that his real defeat has been not in forcing him physically into a cave somewhere over the Pakistan border (or killing him), but in Iraq, where his ideology has been shown for what it is, and appears to be finding increasing rejection.

Whether that's because it offends Rousseau in aesthetics, or whether the strong horse of our military is enforcing Hobbes, I don't care. Probably a lot of both.

9-11-01 was designed as a clarion call for global jihad, the re-establishment of the caliphate, blahblahblah. In 2007, I think Europe---from within---has more to worry about from jihadism than the Muslim world itself.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

At yet another Democrat presidential debate the other day, Barack Obama referred to "the president of Canada."

Did you hear about it? Maybe if you're an internetable newshound, but most people didn't. They weren't watching the debate in record numbers, and the non-partisan American press so far hasn't found it very newsworthy. Although the Canadanadians seem to have noticed.

But it's OK. I'm sure this Harvard Law School grad knows how to spell potatoe, which we have a lot more of than Canadanadians. He'd make a perfect VP. Do you want fries with that?

The Stiftung long argued that Bush-As-Spirit-Of-The-Age is perhapsnot entirely comically absurd. Christian Socialist Authoritarianism inthe U.S. came from somewhere. True, the Movement's various strandstook advantage of 9/11. And true, they together routed and used thehapless Democrats as props and sock puppets until 2006. But the extentof the regime's transformation of American social fabric, mores,politics and destiny was not wholly imposed top down. The Joe Kleinsof the world didn't and still don't get it.

The Enlightenment was always a thin veneer in America before 2001. Itis thinner still in 2007.

Nice formulation, that: "Christian Socialist Authoritarianism" would be entirely defensible by someone like Leo Strauss, I think, as preferable to Jacksonian democracy, civil war, The Gilded Age, Progressivism, and Wilsonianism, as well as a thousand other bad ideas from the world at large.

It's been said that the American Jewish messiah looks a lot like FDR, and Strauss, a Platonist-Jew, dug him bigtime, or so I've heard.

Was the Founding Era America's Golden Age? Hard to tell, as things got unsettled before they got settled. Regardless, it didn't survive democracy and Andrew Jackson, so its tenability is in doubt, as Strauss and a number of others might observe [if they indulged in a bit of historicism]. Christian Socialist Authoritarianism seems toround the bases of electorates throughout the West.

(I will put in a plug for Fred Thompson here, whose noises on federalism are the most Founder-like thing I've heard in my lifetime.)

(And I think the linked essay trickles into la-la-land a little [a lot], but I admire its boldness.)

We discovered a real treasure in CD of American folk songs. Our kids love them and they're pretty easy on parents' ears to boot. But they will sometimes get you an odd look in the grocery store, especially when your five and three-year old are skipping through the grocery store singing "Follow the Drinking Gourd." It's an old song supposedly sung about the Underground Railroad (though this site throws some doubt on the story). You can find the lyrics here and hear the song (after a bit of a lesson) here. The "drinking gourd" refers to the big dipper, by the way,...

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

I sent the following note today to Glenn Reynolds, the ineffable Instapundit and self-appointed referee of all things scholarly:

Dear Professor Reynolds,

I notice that your blog has shined virtually no light on Steve Levitt's utterly embarrassing letter to John McCall, a letter that most scholars with a shred of dignity would write only after having crawled into a deep hole. (As best as I can tell, all you have done is offer an "update" posting with a link.) In case you missed it: Levitt admits that even as he claimed that the special issue of the JLE that Lott put together was not refereed, Levitt himself was one of the referees. Second, Levitt's claim that Lott invited only authors whose views were consistent with his was undermined completely by his admission that he had been invited to submit a paper. (As, by the way, were others with views differing from Lott's.) And, third, the comedy highlight of Levitt's letter is his claim that "[Levitt] did not mean to suggest that Dr. Lott did anything unlawful or improper in arranging for the payment of the publication expenses for the Conference issue." Of course not; precisely what, then, did he mean to suggest?

Perhaps you could offer some of your usual musings on that. More generally, your rather loud silence on this latest development in the Levitt/Lott controversy is interesting, particularly given the massive amounts of attention, quotation, and credibility over these past few years that you have deemed appropriate for those attacking Lott's integrity. Now, why is that? Could it be that you simply are far less objective or "fair" than you like to pretend?

No obfuscations, please: A straight answer would be appreciated. Feel free to post this note if you wish.

The New Republic was the reliable bastion of America's liberals---the center-left, if you will---since the 1950s. But over the past few years, its circulation has dipped, and it cut back from a weekly to a bi-weekly. It was also slipping onto the (ever-growing) "not-approved" list among the leftist netroots. Now, these folks can't get within five feet of a copy of National Review without breaking out in a cold sweat, but when their epistemological limits shrink past TNR, it's time for alarm.

So this Beauchamp business at its inception hit me as a shabby attempt to get relevant again. What concerned me was that it illustrates how much the intellectual center-left has collapsed, represented for 2008 only by Joe Biden and God help us, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The question isn't of the apparent fabrications in the "Scott Thomas" reports, but why TNR went with them in the first place. To help the war effort? Hell no, to undermine it and our troops themselves, and get back in the left's good graces, such as they are.

We see stories from all over the world about UN forces raping children and worse. But they're on page A94 of the papers. After all, we can surely conclude nothing bad about the UN's efforts as a result of these anomolies: they're not inherently meaningful. The front page is reserved for good news about the UN's deployments, and if TNR had been "reporting" rather than agitating, they'd be printing whatever good news is coming from Iraq as well as the even worse stuff the UN forces do.

No, we all know what's going on here. It's only a stroke of luck that Beauchamp couldn't resist embellishing. It could all have been true, let's face it.

With 35% of Democrats believing that Bush had some foreknowledge (or worse) of 9-11, the crank factor on the American left may be approaching an all-time high. Most are unreachable, but to focus on them is to abandon all hope of sanity for our nation. I'll continue to concentrate on engaging the remaining 65%, although it's tempting to drive the nuts even nutser. It doesn't take much, and it's a lot more fun, but duty calls.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Five masked men took the "Cliffs Near Dieppe". Worse yet, they took the "Lane of Poplars Near Moret". My question is: if the cops know their route so exactly, why can't they follow them back to headquarters?

Which painter is stolen more than any other? You guessed it: Monet. Now the question is, what about country music shoplifters? Do they favor Cash?

Monday, August 06, 2007

So the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), one of the big civil rights groups, plans on honoring Michael Vick (the Atlanta QB who has been indicted on dogfighting charges) during its upcoming conference. Well, that's just dandy, since he's clearly just the sort of role model we would all want our children to emulate: likely involved with a rather unsavory and cruel practice, caught flipping off Atlanta fans when he got a few boos, caught spreading around STDs.

Notice, though, how Sports Illustrated describes the SCLC: as a "Christian Group" that's going to honor Vick. Now, in some ways, that's true. The SCLC has long ties to black churches. But when was the last time you saw it described as a "Christian" organization, as opposed to a "civil rights" one? Interesting choice, wouldn't you say?

Thursday, August 02, 2007

In one of those blogo-dust-ups (is that a good phrase? How about "blogcontroversy"? Or maybe blogscuffle? We need a word!) Ross Douthat over at the Atlantic has been taking some heat for suggesting that calling yourself a progressive implicates you in their past support of the eugenics programs of the early 20th century. Go here and wander around for a good example of how arguments just sail past one another.

For the record, I don't think that Hillary!'s self-labeling as a "progressive" of late means much of anything with respect to support for eugenics. And I do think there is a distinction to be made with the "new eugenics" in that its supporters don't want (yet) the state to enforce the improvement of human beings. And it seems right to say that if we could use some sort of gene therapy to prevent folks from developing, say, cystic fibrosis, that would be a very good thing. And most liberals/progressives really aren't tied to the sort of strong notion of progress that their forbears bought into.

Still, the liberal bleating that they're really *not* eugenicists and that it's all going to be merely individual choice and so everything will be just hunky-dory is just a bit disingenuous. These are folks, after all, who in every area of life other than those things that might ever so tangentially touch on the freedom to procreate as one will (or will not, in far too many cases) insist that free choice really isn't free choice. Hey, some folks decide to take out 35% interest pay-day loans - they made their own choice, right? The truth of the matter (it seems to me) is that in a society where certain sorts of perfection start being the product of choice, especially among the wealthy, well-born, etc., it will necessarily create an obverse pressure on everyone to *choose* in certain ways. One of the ways that Tocqueville gets democratic culture exactly right is his analysis of how public opinion works to ensure a uniformity of views that is much more powerful and much more thoroughgoing than anything government itself could do. So when the successful and wealthy people in a society suddenly start having children that all have TVD's beatific good looks and winsome personality and everyone has a "choice" about what "sort" of children they produce, they will "choose" to all have little TVD's. God help us.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

It sez here that Barack Obama just killed his chance for the presidency with this---

Let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

This fits the lefty mantra that we had bin Laden surrounded and only peeling off troops for Iraq thwarted his capture and everything would be ducky if we had. (Afghanistan is the "good" war.)

The man on the street forgets that when an American public figure speaks, the world listens. Obama has no such excuse:

Pakistan, by virtue of its nukes and population of 170 million, is the most powerful Muslim nation in the world. For Obama to even hint at invading it or even violating its territorial sovereignty is, oh, how did she put it, ah yes, irresponsible and frankly naive.

I trust the American people will not put our lives in the hands of this amateur. And this might be the coffin-nail for even the VP slot. Hillary doesn't need him---contrary to the prevailing wisdom that the black vote will stay home if he's passed over, Hillary polls very well among blacks and is married to the even more popular First Black President. After this latest bit of nonsense, Obama could easily cost more votes than he would gain for the ticket.

No, Hillary's VP choice will be Evan Bayh, a senator and former governor of the great red state of Indiana, and he'll single-handedly plunk it down in the blue column. Mebbe Obama figured that out, and that's why he's been going for broke lately. Bayh is a helluva statesman, a solid centrist, and was my secret hope to become the Democrat nominee in 2008. But he sized up the field, saw Hillary astride it, and decided not to run. He's kept a very low profile since, avoiding the Reid/Shumer partisan wars and the line of fire on Iraq, in order to arrive at the Democrat convention next year as the squeaky-clean VP nominee.

With his thoroughly impressive record and resume, many Democrats will wonder if the ticket isn't upside-down. This Republican will have no doubt.

The Reform Club, c. 1915

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